They don't make villain conferences like this any more. One of the interchangeable aliens from this season of Falling Skies grabs a lump of coal and scrunches it into a red diamond, so he can have a teleconference with another alien, in a burning hellscape lifted from a Mortal Kombat game.

Isn't that the greatest thing you've seen this week? Especially dialogue like, "Ha, ha, my mistake. Only YOU would know failure."

At this point, the aliens are doing so many experiments on humans, it's not clear at first which experiment they're referring to. There's the Nazi boarding school experiment, where they are successful enough at indoctrinating kids that they all blow their whistles when Tom Mason shows up to rescue Matt "Mad Dog" Mason. There's the harness experiment that apparently failed and was abandoned. There's the Skitterization of adult humans, which turned Dan Weaver's daughter Jeanie into a monster who still retains enough of herself to fight for her dad.

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And there's the hybrid thing, where they've turned Lexi into a hippie version Daenerys Targaryen — who apparently is completely obedient and their new weapon and stuff. When Lexi's mom Anne shows up at the camp, Lexi feeds her the usual line of crap about peace and love, which works for about five minutes until Anne finds out Lexi is meeting with an Espheni — the one who's communicating by soul-diamond in the clip above.

Also in this episode: Pope gets a love interest, played by a ridiculously smiley, goofing-around Mira Sorvino. Who apparently didn't get the memo that this is a serious post-apocalyptic war show, and just wants to mug for the camera. Still, gotta love her drugging and almost killing Pope, so she can steal his truck. That's actually a good match for the Popester. (And now Pope has a new nickname.)